Officer Shirogane and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Case
by GhostGenocide
Summary: After an extended leave of absence, Officer Takashi Shirogane is itching to get back out in the field. Captain Holt, however, has a special assignment for him - a wild goose chase to capture and arrest the elusive vigilante group known as "The Paladins," which, unbeknownst to either of them, may or may not entail potentially arresting his boss's daughter.
1. Chapter 1

**AN:** Hey, everyone! So recently I posted on Tumblr (dadboyshiro) about this ridiculous Shiro/Pidge cop au, and it got quite a few reactions that it seemed I should turn it into a full-blown fic. I've never written action/comedy before, so I really hope this turns out alright! I'm cross-posting this on AO3 (Costellos) as well for anyone who'd rather read it there; personally, I like it much better than FF. Anyway, sorry for wasting your time with my ramblings, but your thoughts and criticisms would be super appreciated. Thanks, and enjoy! :)

* * *

On a hot, muggy night under cover of darkness, Katie "Pidge" Holt sat cross-legged on the ground of a dimly lit back alleyway, hunched over her laptop outside of the back entrance to 54th National Bank.

 _Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

"Uh, a little help here, Pidge!"

"I'm trying!" Pidge shouted, tapping away measuredly as she tried to troubleshoot the remote viewing program that for some reason was giving her a blank feed. Lance, who was _supposed_ to be the eyes of the operation, continued to panic in her ear. "Are you _sure_ you turned the glasses on?" she asked.

"Yes, Pidge, I'm not an idiot! Plus that little light thingy is totally flashing like crazy."

"The red one? That's not supposed to do that," their lookout, Hunk, chimed in from two streets over.

"Well that's what it's doing!" The beeping on Lance's end was steady and slow, but it still served as an unnerving reminder that they didn't have time to dawdle around. "Seriously, guys, we've got about fifty seconds before this thing goes off, and as much as this beats working at Dairy Queen—"

"Do we at least have _any_ sort of visual yet?" Hunk asked.

"Unless I can suddenly see inside Lance's head? Then no." She smashed a few more keys over Lance's defensive complaining, but it was in vain; her screen was still pitch black. "Guys, I think the camera might be broken."

Hunk groaned. "Oh, no. This is bad."

"Relax, big guy! It's not like we've never disabled an alarm without being able to see it before," Lance said a little too loudly, making everyone else's earpiece buzz.

"Okay, yeah, sure, but those weren't _bank alarms."_

"Hm. Fair point."

"Alright, we're just gonna have to do this old school," Pidge said, closing out of the program and cracking her knuckles. "Hunk, you circle the block a few more times, then park over at that gas station down the street. Stop at a pump, but don't get out."

"On it."

"Lance, can you describe to me what you see?"

"Weird, but whatever. Tile floor, sort of off-gray walls… I think that's a—"

"The _alarm,_ Lance!"

Blindly talking him through it was a lesson in patience, but temporarily disabling the alarm was easy enough, having been somewhat old and outdated, almost a complete replica of the ones that she and Hunk took apart and reverse engineered back in their training days; the temporary proxy passcode chip that Pidge had equipped Lance with helped, too. But the door to the bank vault quickly ate up their borrowed time.

"Lance, what the hell are you doing!" Pidge shouted. The six minutes that the chip had bought them had run out, and the alarm was blaring so loud that she could feel the high-pitched ringing reverberating down her spine through the brick wall.

Lance scoffed. "Well _sorry_ for never having cracked open a _bajillion_ pound bank vault door before. Not all of us are as privileged to go to Super Spy Academy like you."

"I thought you said that you practiced!"

"I did! _On cash safes!"_

"You mean those little twenty-dollar things you can buy at _Wal-Mart?"_

"Oh, jeez. Oh, man. This is worse than bad." Hunk fretted. "Lance is gonna go to prison, Pidge and I are gonna lose our jobs, I'll never be able to qualify for that mortgage loan Shay and I've been saving up for—"

"Hey, why am I the only one going to prison!"

"Would the two of you just shut up already!" Pidge massaged her temples and breathed. "Hunk, nothing's going to happen, alright? We're gonna be fine. Lance, just—focus on getting the vault open, okay?"

For two whole minutes there was nothing but uneasy silence, peppered with Lance's frustrated grunts and metallic clicking. Then there was a heavy _clang._ Lance promptly erupted into self-appraising cheers.

"Uh, guys? Not that it isn't totally cool that Lance just successfully committed, like, at least three different felonies, but you might wanna get outta there," Hunk said. "Cops are on their way, coming from Main and Jefferson."

Pidge checked the time. "Lance, hurry up and find Morvok's box. Should be #1984."

"Don't you worry your pretty little head, my Pidgerino. I'll be in and out in a—"

 _Bip!_

"Whoops."

Pidge's heart stopped. "'Whoops'?"

A second alarm sounded, this one a low, bloodcurdling wail, akin to what one might imagine it would sound like if the seventh seal were to be broken and all hell let loose. Police sirens could be heard in the far distance.

"Lance, what did you do!"

"I didn't know there'd be motion detectors!"

Hunk panicked. "Guys, the police—!"

"Yes, Hunk, we can _hear_ them," Pidge chided as she scrambled to pack all of her things back into her bag. She wasn't worried about the second alarm as much as she was annoyed—the police were already on their way, after all—but they still needed to get out of there. Fast. She tied her hair back and slid her bandana up over her nose in preparation. "Alright, Hunk, I'm gonna need you to punch it. Like, now. Head south, Lance and I will go east. Lance, don't worry about the other alarm, it's not like it makes any difference. Just find the box and grab the card!"

"Done and done," Lance said, audibly shuffling around what Pidge presumed to be Morvok's safe deposit box for a moment before suddenly falling silent. "Hey, so, silver bullions. Can you just take those to a bank and trade 'em for cash, or...?"

To say that Pidge was starting to regret ever letting Lance in on her operation would be an understatement. "Grab. The. Card!"

"I got it! But—"

"THEN LET'S FUCKING GO!"

Just then, a slew of police cruisers zipped past in a flurry of red, white, and blue, continuing southbound and completely bypassing the dark alleyway where Pidge was pushing herself up off the rain-soaked ground. Pidge breathed a sigh of relief, until one of the cruisers—a newer Ford Explorer model and one that she'd become more acquainted with than she would have ever preferred to be over the last few weeks—came to a screeching stop right at the end of the alley, effectively blocking the street.

The reinforced steel back door to the bank flung open and Lance nearly tripped as he threw himself out, wearing what Pidge could only presume was a face-splitting grin beneath his own bandana and holding up his knapsack like a trophy for the entire world to see—cops included.

"Alright," he said, gulping down air. "Now what?"

A gunshot rang out and ricocheted off the door next to them.

"Stay right where you are and put your hands above your head!"

"Come on!" Pidge shouted and grabbed Lance by the elbow, pulling him out of his momentary shock and dragging him along with her. Behind them, the passenger side door opened, slowly followed by the driver's.

"Wait, Sh—hey! Hold on!"

Pidge did nothing of the sort. She didn't even know if the order had been directed at her. The voice was different from the first one, more frustrated than aggressive, and not quite as familiar. Regardless, it still belonged to a cop, and it was pointless to wonder about such things when they had RoboCop hot on their trail.

Lance started digging around the bottom of his knapsack.

"Are you serious right now?" Pidge asked, unsure if Lance was just an idiot or if the thought of prison life was just suddenly starting to seem like a good idea to him. Lance chuckled as he procured a hearty handful of something from his bag.

"I have an idea."

"Oh, great."

"Just trust me, alright? My nephew does this to me all the time. It totally works."

Pidge wanted to ask what it was that Lance's apparently-genius nephew had in mind for successfully evading an obsessive, trigger-happy, police academy poster boy; but then Lance threw whatever he'd been holding down behind them as they rounded the corner.

Marbles.

"I cannot _believe—"_

"You didn't even give it a chance!" Lance argued, and threw back another two handfuls.

By the grace of some unknown deity—or perhaps what they just thought would be some sort of hilarious joke—it worked. Or at least Pidge thought it did, judging by the winded _"Oof!"_ and the sound of something clattering behind them.

Pidge chanced a look over her shoulder to find their pursuer face down on the ground, wrist twisted in a way that couldn't possibly be natural and his gun at least a good six feet from his reach. Pidge decided that she could at least let Lance have this, as he whooped and laughed, jogging backwards to flip RoboCop dual birdies while proclaiming "fuck the police!" before he remembered who he was with and sheepishly apologized. They hung a left onto the desolate main road, where across the street in the empty parking lot of a closed realtor's office sat a forest green Triumph Bonneville and not a police cruiser in sight.

Back in the alleyway, Officer Takashi "Shiro" Shirogane pushed himself up onto his knees, wincing in pain as he massaged his right shoulder. His partner, Officer Keith Kogane, finally caught up to him seconds later.

"Shiro! Are you okay?" Keith asked, rushing over to his side. He quickly noticed the marbles surrounding them, having almost stepped on one, and furrowed a brow. "Are those marbles?"

"Apparently they think this is a game." Shiro fumbled with his prosthetic arm, manually cracking his wrist back into the proper position; it was loose. To make matters worse, he couldn't move his fingers when he tried. "Great."

Keith held out a hand, which Shiro accepted. "How's the arm?"

"I'm not sure," Shiro said as he tried shifting his arm around, hoping that maybe the electrodes just weren't picking up his muscle contractions. Still, nothing. He sighed. "I think it's broken."

"Maybe it just needs a charge," Keith suggested, although there was little optimism in his voice. He eyed the gun on the ground near the dumpster and frowned. "Shiro, you—"

The sound of a motorcycle revving took precedence to Keith's oncoming reprimanding, which Shiro knew he'd be hearing ten times over on the way back to the precinct, anyway. He looked up just in time to catch it roar past, only for a fraction of a second, the Paladins' faces obscured by their helmets.

"Dammit!" Shiro slammed his boot against the dumpster while Keith simply looked on.

He could've finally put an end to all of this; he could've been back working on the Galra crime ring case with rest of the department. He'd been _so close_ to finally catching one, no, _two_ of those petty little crooks, only to be bested by a child's plaything.

Shiro snatched his gun from the ground and started heading back to their abandoned police cruiser at the other end of the alley, leaving Keith to heave an exasperated sigh before jogging after him.

He didn't know when he'd get another chance like tonight, but he swore that the next time he saw them, it would be the last.


	2. Chapter 2

Less than an hour later, Officers Shirogane and Kogane arrived back at the precinct, the only two who'd been sent back early after Detectives Allura and Kolivan had conducted an initial assessment of the scene and determined that it wasn't necessary for them to stick around. At least not Shiro, anyway.

"Don't worry, Shiro. We've got everything under control," Allura had assured him. "If this has anything to do with the Paladins, you'll be the first to know. I promise."

"But I _saw_ them, Allura. I literally chased two of them down this exact alley."

"Can you happen to recall what they might've looked like?"

"Well, no, but—" Allura's forced sympathetic smile made his insides itch. She never used to look at him like that before. "Look, Allura, I just want to go inside and take a quick look around. Can you at least just let me do that?"

She couldn't, of course. Captain's orders. Keith, siding with Allura, had dragged him to their cruiser and drove them back downtown, without a care for even the smallest amount of information regarding tonight's seemingly run-of-the-mill bank robbery. The detectives had chalked it up to being a failed heist, having only managed to steal so much of value before the police arrived and the culprits fled. Shiro, however, knew better than that.

"I thought we agreed that you wouldn't run off like that anymore," Keith continued, carrying over their conversation from the ride back once he saw that the room was clear. From the moment Shiro had slid into the passenger seat, Keith was only able to bite his tongue for two and a half stoplights before it all came tumbling out. "Did you forget what happened the last time you went after someone alone? And now look! Your arm's busted!"

Shiro winced as he fell back into his chair across from his partner, whose desk was situated right in front of his own. He rolled his shoulders and fumbled with the straps that helped secure his arm in place, hooking a finger under them to relieve the pressure from digging into his chest. "What happened to 'maybe it just needs a charge'?"

"This isn't funny, Shiro."

"They were right there. I almost had them."

"You _shot_ at them! _From the car!"_

Shiro slung his prosthetic arm across his desk and rummaged around his drawer for a charger, pointedly ignoring Keith's intense stare as he inspected the visible damage. Beneath the harsh fluorescent lighting he could make out every little scratch, scrape, and dent in the dark carbon alloy, a good deal of them being new and nearly all of them having been earned from chasing after the smallest of the Paladins; Pidge, he'd heard the taller one call them once.

If his hand worked, he'd have been clenching it right now. "I couldn't let them get away again, Keith. Not this time."

"So what, you were planning on bringing them to the captain _dead?_ You seriously think that'd get you back on the Galra case any faster?" Keith asked. Shiro didn't answer. "Listen, Shiro. I know better than anyone how much taking down Zarkon means to you, but you can't just keep acting like this. Ever since you came back…" He sighed, noticing Shiro's obvious disinterest in the conversation. "You know what, never mind. Just forget it."

They fell into their usual silence that had become commonplace over the last two months, with Keith's nose buried in paperwork and Shiro quietly lamenting over the loss of how things had been, once upon a time, when Keith was a bright-eyed recruit who'd looked up to him as if he were the police chief himself, rather than the broken, washed-up has been that he was now.

From down the hall, Captain Holt emerged from his office, a hefty bundle of files tucked under his arm. Shiro stood up the second he saw him come around the corner, while Keith only glanced up in acknowledgement. "Evening, boys!"

"Good evening, sir." Shiro straightened his back. Captain Holt, never having been one for formalities, made a face and waved his hand, putting Shiro at ease.

"You're still here?" Keith asked. "I thought you left earlier."

"I did, but it seems there were a few loose ends I forgot to tie up, so here I am." He chuckled. "Ah, I heard there was a pretty serious call tonight. How did it go?"

"Bad," Keith answered bluntly. "Shiro really banged himself up this time."

"Really?" Holt's attention automatically drifted to Shiro's right arm. "Don't tell me you were chasing after those bad guys again."

"I was only doing my job, sir," Shiro insisted.

"Yes, well, your job also entails not taking too many chances and returning home safely, so please try to keep that in mind, would you?" Holt smiled. He dropped the stack of manila folders onto their desks, distributing them in a way so that Shiro's pile was easily and noticeably double than that of Keith's, who groaned as if he'd just had the entirety of the records department dumped right into his lap. "Oh, don't give me that," Holt told him.

With some emergency last minute phone calls needing to be made, Captain Holt excused himself back to his office, leaving the two of them with instructions to "take it easy." He lingered when he clapped Shiro on the shoulder and gave him a gentle shake. Keith only received a nod.

Shiro tore the charger from his arm and followed after him.

"Excuse me, Captain—"

"Oh— _goodness,_ Shiro." Holt pressed a hand to his chest, the other gripped tight around the doorknob to his office. He exhaled. "What is it? Is everything alright?"

"Sorry, sir, I didn't mean to scare you. I was just hoping that I could talk to you for a minute about tonight's call."

"At the bank?"

"Yes, sir."

Holt hummed. "Well, I don't see why not. Here, come on in."

There was always something warm and inviting about Captain Holt's office. Whether it was comfortably dim lightening or the sort of organized clutter that really gave it that lived in, homey feeling, Shiro couldn't quite tell. He had little interest in admiring the certificates and photos from department gatherings that covered the walls tonight, though.

"I wanted to ask for your permission to go back to the crime scene," he said without missing a beat as soon as he heard the door click shut behind him.

Captain Holt lifted a brow. "Why on Earth would you want to do that?"

"To look for evidence, sir."

"I thought Allura and Kolivan were handling that?"

"They are, but—"

"Then there's no reason for you to waste your time with such nonsense."

"Sir, I really think I should go back. I'm confident that this was the Paladins work, and—"

"The Paladins?" Holt interrupted. "Is that what Allura said?"

"She didn't—" Shiro took a deep breath and swallowed his frustration. "Look, Captain Holt, as much as I trust Allura and her work, I _know_ it was the Paladins who robbed that bank. For the past two months I've been doing nothing but keeping tabs on them, and honestly, I've been saying for almost a week now that they were going to try and pull something at 54th National. I wasn't sure when, but I knew it'd be soon. See, I've noticed there's a pattern—"

"Shiro..."

"—they only ever target Galra members, and I know that one of them—"

"Shiro."

"—I already have an idea on where they might strike next, but if I can just go back and look around for any clues—"

"Shiro, that's enough."

Captain Holt's office suddenly felt about as welcoming as the dusty, cold cell that he'd spent seven months being locked up and tortured in in the basement of Zarkon's warehouse. "I know that you're passionate about your job," Holt continued, stern but understanding. "Hell, you're one of the best officers we've got. But don't you think you're taking all of this just a little bit too… seriously?"

Shiro grit his teeth. "With all due respect, sir," he began, biting a bit harder into the honorific than he'd meant to, "you were the one who assigned this case to me. My instructions were to catch and arrest them. I'm only trying to do my job."

"Well if they're only targeting Galra members, then they can't be _that_ bad," Holt considered, the corners of his mouth fighting to betray the seriousness of the conversation. Shiro could feel his blood pressure skyrocketing by the second. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding." Holt chuckled. "But really, Shiro, there's no need for you to be rushing into things so quickly. Just relax! I mean, you've only been back for, what, two months now?"

Two months without any real purpose or objective, just a dead-end case to keep him running around in circles so that he wouldn't be a burden to the rest of the department—or himself. It was like being given a gun and a badge and then being told to go play alone in the sandbox. He had no real resources or leeway; he wasn't allowed to investigate leads, or conduct stakeouts; he couldn't even consult with the detectives. All he had to work with was what little information he could gather from the written reports that were marked specifically for him, and maybe—just maybe—if he got lucky while responding to a call, he'd have a chance to run into the Paladins himself. And tonight, he'd been closer than ever.

"Captain Holt, _please."_ Shiro's voice was beginning to lose its composure. "I didn't come back to the department just to be kept on the bench like this. I know you're just doing what you think is best for me, but I'm ready to get back to work on the Galra case with the rest of the department, and if you could just give me a chance—"

"Keith's been telling me that you've been under a lot of stress lately," Captain Holt said suddenly, cutting Shiro's pleas short. "Is that true?"

Shiro hesitated. "I'm not sure I understand what you're talking about, sir."

"He says you've been on edge ever since I put you back on patrol. That you've been erratic and unpredictable—paranoid, even. That you've been relying on your gun too much," Holt explained gently, coming around to lean against the front of his desk. He gave Shiro a sympathetic smile, cut from the same cloth that Allura's had been. "Sometimes you'll even shoot at nothing, he says. Noises, shadows..."

Shiro kept his mouth shut. He could feel the anxious pinpricks of sweat on his neck soaking into the collar of his uniform. He didn't want to lose the only chance he had to be out in the field, away from the towers of paperwork and phone calls that plagued his desk. Captain Holt must've realized this because he shook his head and sighed.

"You've been though a lot, Shiro. More than anyone else in this department, and certainly more than me—I mean, they took your _arm,_ for Christ's sake. But you can't continue to keep acting like this," he said. "I know it's been a couple of years now, and you tell me that you're fine, but your job performance… I can't keep you here if you can't get yourself under control. Not only are you a risk to yourself, but also to the entire department, and I can't let you bring everyone else down, too."

Shiro nodded. "I understand, sir."

"Good," Captain Holt said. "You're still seeing that doctor, right?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you're taking your meds?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's what I like to hear." He beamed and gave Shiro another clap on the shoulder. "I hope you know I don't mean to be harsh on you. You're like a second son to me. I just want you to be safe."

"I know." Shiro's gaze subconsciously snapped to the framed picture on the Captain's desk; an old family photo of himself, his wife, and their two children, Matt and Katie. "How's your family holding up?" he asked.

Captain Holt let out a wistful sigh. "I wouldn't exactly say that Colleen's doing well, but she's certainly handling it better than my daughter is," he said. "She's been working the case too, you know. Ever since the FBI came in and took over the investigation—"

"FBI? Nobody told me anything about that."

"Well, it was a few months before you came back. It's more of a joint investigation, really," he said. "I guess after the lab went up in flames and all the evidence went missing, the feds figured that maybe we might've bit off more than we could chew." He looked at his watch. "Ah, I'm sorry, but I should really get to those calls before it gets any later."

"Right. Sorry for keeping you," Shiro apologized. He wanted to say something about Matt—that he was fine and that they'd find him soon—but he didn't want to get the captain's hopes up. If anyone else in that department had any idea of what he'd gone through while under Zarkon's hold, it was the man who'd been there with him, even if only for a fraction of the time.

"Oh, and Shiro?"

"Yes, sir?"

"One more screw up, and I'm going to have to confiscate your gun."

"Understood, sir," Shiro said, and then quickly excused himself from his boss's office.

Back out in the main area, the room was filling up fast, with the rest of the department returning back from the crime scene. Keith, who'd been busy working on some of the files, pushed them aside when Shiro sat back down across from him. "What was all that about?" he asked.

"Nothing, just had to talk to the captain for a second."

"You were in there for twenty minutes."

"I said it was nothing, Keith," Shiro snapped.

Keith huffed and ducked back down into his work. "…Sorry," he mumbled after a while, eyes never leaving his desk. Shiro scrubbed at his face and pinched the bridge of his nose. Keith was only being a good partner—he had no right to be short with him for keeping the captain informed. Still, Shiro silently prayed that Keith would somehow miraculously forget about what had happened tonight.

Shiro nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand on his back.

 _"Jesus,_ Allura."

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" Allura apologized, eyes wide with concern as she tore her hand away. Shiro instinctively moved further out of her reach. "Please, forgive me. Sometimes I forget.. _._ " She cleared her throat. "Anyway, I just wanted to give you this. I know how upset you were earlier, and well, I figured it probably wouldn't hurt for you to go through it. Perhaps it'd even put your mind at ease, at least a little. Besides, I do suppose I owe you one for agreeing to help out with the ball."

Shiro chose not to acknowledge the agreement he'd made to assist Allura with the department's annual charity event as he accepted the thick manila folder. Feeling something small and hard, he peeked inside to find an evidence bag containing a tiny, thumb-sized microchip. He lifted a brow at Allura. "Another one?"

"It seems you might've been right about the Paladins, after all," Allura admitted sheepishly. Then she handed him another bag, this one containing two small discs, each in their own envelope. "The recordings, too, if you're interested. They've unfortunately been wiped clean, though."

Shiro didn't need them, but he took them nonetheless; the microchip—the same as two others that they'd found in the alarm systems at the broken-in homes of undeniable Galra associates—was more than enough solid evidence to prove that it was, in fact, the Paladins who'd he'd chased after tonight.

"Thanks, Allura," he said, looking the chip over as if it contained the answers to the universe itself; it was the written report that he couldn't wait to sink his teeth into, though.

Allura smiled at him and left to join her own partner over in the detective's unit next door, and as soon as she was out of sight, Shiro tossed the evidence bags aside and went straight for the folder, bypassing a good chunk of the mandatory routine paperwork until he found exactly what he was looking for: a copy of the bank's safe deposit logs.

His initial excitement quickly waned as he shuffled through the hundreds upon hundreds of untouched boxes, and nearly dropped off altogether once he'd finally found the one that _had_ been tampered with, belonging to someone by the name of Morvok, an eccentric architect and close enough associate of Zarkon for Shiro to have come across their name a time or two before while snooping through the records department unauthorized.

 **CONTENTS #1984**  
(8) Silver bullion bars  
(2) Government bonds  
(1) SD card

Shiro frowned as he read through the notes, irritated with the lack of details surrounding the contents of the SD card. There was no way of knowing exactly _what_ the Paladins were up to with such vague information, and everything else that'd been stolen was even less helpful in trying to determine their motive.

Hopes dashed, Shiro began to close the folder, until he noticed Morvok's name again, printed alongside another safe deposit box, this one for some reason untouched.

 **CONTENTS #1985**  
(2) Document folders  
(1) SD card

Shiro froze.

The Paladins must've made a mistake.

"Shiro? Where are you going?" Keith asked, watching as he struggled to wrestle his broken prosthesis into the sleeve of his windbreaker. Shiro mumbled something quick and fast under his breath that Keith couldn't quite catch as he gathered up his belongings. "What?"

"I said I'm gonna head out—home. Get some sleep."

Keith nodded, blatantly unaware of the renewed source of restless energy coursing through Shiro's bones. "Probably a good idea. You've been here all day, anyway," he agreed, then yawned. "Alright, go get some rest, man. And hey, call me if you need anything, okay?"

Thankful for the oblivious nature of his partner, Shiro said his goodbyes and assured him that he'd see him tomorrow before making a beeline for the door with the keys to their cruiser clenched tightly in his fist.


	3. Chapter 3

**AN:** Oh man, I just wanted to say that I'm super glad to know there are so many of you guys who are enjoying this (I see those follows/favorites, haha). Thank you so much! If you guys are on Tumblr, my VLD blog is dadboyshiro. Otherwise, your thoughts are always appreciated :)

* * *

"Where the hell are you!"

 _Message deleted._

"Shiro, I swear to god, if you don't answer your phone—"

 _Message deleted._

"You know what, whatever. Don't answer your phone. But at least let me know you're still alive or something. Holt's been asking about you, so I told him you were out sick—"

 _Message deleted._

Shiro dropped his phone into the console cupholder and sighed. He was mentally and physically beat; both from the seventeen angry voice messages that Keith had left him and from being cooped up in the front seat of their squad car for almost two nights straight. He was grungy and exhausted, desperate for a hot shower and a good night's sleep, and the longer he sat parked on the side of the plaza across from 54th National, the more he was starting to think that perhaps he'd been wrong; maybe the Paladins _hadn't_ made a mistake. Maybe they did get what they'd came for and wouldn't be coming back. Maybe he was doing all this for nothing.

Shiro tipped his head back and closed his eyes.

That settled it—he'd give it another day, at most. There wasn't a point in murdering his back like this, not when the possibility of the Paladins showing up was steadily dwindling with every passing second and Keith had the captain breathing down his neck. Then there was Allura, who'd he'd promised to help hang the lights and rearrange the furniture in the hall for the charity dance—

The almost inaudible sound of a door clicking shut had Shiro sitting up, pin straight and eyes wide open as he scanned his surroundings from his rolled-down window. His attention automatically snapped to the alleyway across from him, where—unless he was imagining things—he could have sworn he'd seen a sliver of light pouring out from where the back door to the bank should've been, if only for a split second.

With only one way to know for sure, Shiro quietly hopped out of the car and tiptoed his way across the street, his hand rested firmly on the gun on his hip.

* * *

Lance had grabbed the wrong card.

"What do you mean it's not the right card? It was the only one in there!" he had all but yelled through a mouthful of hash browns. Once enough time had passed to be safe that the heat was sufficiently off their backs, the three of them had regrouped at the 24-hour breakfast diner that they often frequented to go over the earlier events of the night. Unfortunately, upon popping the much sought-after SD card into her laptop while waiting for her milkshake to arrive, Pidge had found that the contents weren't quite what she'd been expecting.

"There's nothing on here but a bunch of pictures and shady accounting info. Like, _heaps_ of tax fraud," Pidge had said, scrolling through the files with furrowed brows. "I don't understand. Morvok said it'd be on here."

"People will say whatever you want 'em to say when they're being tased by a four-foot-tall gremlin _—ow, hey!"_

"Well, that's not so bad though, right? The tax stuff. Maybe it can help bring down Zarkon if we can somehow tie him to Morvok," Hunk had suggested, either forgetting that the evidence they'd accidentally gathered was very illegal and therefore unusable or simply just trying to distract his best friends from maiming each other.

"But that's not going to help me find my _brother,"_ Pidge reminded him bitterly. Hunk frowned and turned to smother his obvious discomfort in his pancakes, while Lance, meanwhile, had since taken refuge from Pidge's abuse in his small pile of silver and his cell phone calculator. Pidge chewed her lip, scrolling through the documents on the SD card a few more times in silence before making a decision. "We need to go back."

"What? No way!" Lance said. "We already got what we went for!"

"We didn't go for the money, Lance! We went for the card!"

"Yeah, and we got it!"

"I hate to be the one to say it, but I think Lance is right. It's way too dangerous," Hunk agreed. "Plus, don't we kinda have a rule about that? Going to the same place twice? I mean, that's like _asking_ to be caught."

"This is different," Pidge had insisted. But despite her impassioned explanation about how it was only a matter of time before Morvok would move banks and even an attempt to bribe Lance with the prospect of additional spoils, neither of her accomplices were willing to take the risk.

"I'm sorry, Pidge, but we can't," Hunk had eventually told her, gently clasping her shoulder with one of his large, comforting hands. The threatening sting of angry tears had followed soon after.

* * *

There was no use arguing with Hunk—Pidge knew that. He might've been the token scaredy-cat of the group, but he was also the most sensible, not afraid to poke whatever holes may need be into clearly-flawed plans if only to ensure the safety and well-being of his friends. But Pidge hadn't come all that way just to give up, not when she was that much closer to finally finding her brother. So if she just so happened to swing by 54th National sometime after ten o'clock two nights later, well, Hunk didn't need to know.

"C'mon, c'mon…" Pidge grumbled as she blindly felt around Morvok's safe deposit box. Even by herself, breaking back into the bank hadn't been nearly as difficult as she'd expected. There wasn't any added security, save for an additional couple of cameras that she was able to shut off with ease, and Lance—despite his staunch disapproval of her "essentially going on a suicide mission"—had at least been smart enough to remember the vault's combination, which, whether out of pure laziness or just a total lack of regard for their clients' belongings, hadn't been changed. No matter. Pidge was only glad to have her job made that much easier.

Except that it wasn't.

"Dammit!" She slammed the box shut. Lance must've been telling the truth when he said he'd totally cleaned it out, because there wasn't a damned thing in there.

Pidge pursed her lips and glared at the drawer, her arms crossed over her chest. One more time she slid it open, just to be certain, feeling around for every little nook and crevice that she could find.

Nothing.

Pidge sighed and closed the drawer.

As hardheaded as she was, Pidge knew when to call it quits. Frustrated and discouraged but ultimately prepared to accept defeat, she hitched her bag up over her shoulder and began to make her way out; until her eyes trailed over the other deposit boxes immediately surrounding Morvok's own vacant one.

Bingo.

With a few minutes time and some very base lock-picking skills, Pidge had found Morvok's second deposit box that he'd oh so conveniently forgot to mention existed. Most of its contents were of little value to her—stacks upon stacks of forged documents and paperwork that might've held the potential to help bring down Zarkon in the grand scheme of things, but were ultimately useless when it came to her own more selfish objective—so she left them. The small black SD card, however, was coming with her.

Pidge quickly backtracked and made herself scarce, resetting both the motion detectors and the main alarm system, making sure to retrieve the proxy passcode chips that Lance had a nasty habit of leaving behind along the way. With plenty of time to spare, she was home free, the humid but welcomed night air on her face and the key to her brother's whereabouts finally in hand.

Pidge could hardly contain her excitement. She wanted nothing more than to drop to her knees right there in the middle of the alley and pull her laptop from her bag, but she knew she couldn't afford to take any more chances; it'd have to wait until she got home. Right now, she needed to get back to her motorcycle, which she'd parked over behind that dumpster around the corner, and—

"Freeze!"

Pidge's stomach dropped to the floor.

"Turn around! Hands above your head!"

Much less worried about having been caught red-handed rather than the now very real possibility of being shot in the back point-blank, Pidge did as she was told, fighting to keep her heartbeat under control as she turned around as slowly as humanly possible so as not to startle her captor with any sudden movements. She didn't need to see them to know who it was—she'd recognize that tense, unwavering voice anywhere—though the glint of the barrel of their gun pointing directly at her face only further confirmed their identity.

"I'm sorry, officer," Pidge said, trying for confused, innocent civilian, "but I think there's a misunder—"

"I said don't move!"

Pidge's arms shot up even higher above her head.

Pidge waited and watched as RoboCop observed her from the shadows, unable to see anything but the silhouette of a man and the shine of their boots reflecting off the shallow puddle that they were standing in. Eventually, RoboCop lowered his gun and slowly made his way out of the darkness, and for the first time since their initial run in nearly two months ago, Pidge finally, _actually_ saw him.

She gasped. "Your hair—? Whoa, your face!"

The words had come tumbling out before she could stop herself, sending a burning twinge of shame down her neck as she hurried to cover her mouth before she could possibly say something even more stupid. Between the tuft of solid white hair that she'd always thought was just her eyes playing tricks on her from far enough away, or the grisly scar that stretched across his nose, practically impossible to miss up this close, even beneath the paltry glow of the moonlight, she hadn't been prepared.

Pidge didn't know _what_ to focus on. She cycled her attention from his hair, to his scar, to his eyes, not wanting to be too obvious in her shock but neither wanting to seem as if she'd seriously let herself be intimidated by some psycho stalker cop, until she noticed the way his steely grey eyes seemed to soften the longer he looked at her and it suddenly clicked that, oh jeez, he was… actually kind of handsome.

Pidge swallowed and stared at the ground instead. Shiro, following her gaze, holstered his gun when he realized that he was still holding it.

Shiro was totally and utterly confused. Had he made a mistake? This person—no. This _girl_. She was certainly short enough to be the small Paladin, but…

Shiro examined her in silence, eyes darting from her adorably tiny hands to her bright, wide eyes, filled with—fear? Embarrassment? Shiro couldn't tell, but his gut had seemed to have already made up its mind; that the girl in front of him was far too innocent and unassuming to be any real threat. Cute, in a way. Pretty, even? Familiar, if nothing else, which only made him feel all the more conflicted about the whole situation.

Maybe she worked at the bank, he thought, because after all, he hadn't heard any alarms go off; she could've just been working late and was now finally heading home. But it was nearly eleven at night, and the bank had closed well before five that day—and were employees even allowed to wear hoodies to work?

Shiro cleared his throat, remembering what Captain Holt had said about one more screw up; threatening a bank employee would easily be grounds for immediate termination. He'd better tread carefully. "What are you doing out here?"

The girl looked up at him as if he'd suddenly grown two heads. "…What?"

"Are you lost? Heading home?" he continued, but was only met with the same look of disbelief. He sighed. "You shouldn't be out here alone at this time of night. It's too dangerous. This is an active crime scene, and the perp's still on the loose. Who knows what they're capable of."

She blinked. "Excuse me? Perp?"

"You know. Criminal, bad guy."

The girl's adorably tiny hands were suddenly balled fists at her side. "I'm not a fucking bad guy!" she spat, hot and entirely unprovoked, as if it'd been _burning_ in her throat for only god knows how long, despite the two of them having only just met moments ago. Shiro, needless to say, was taken aback.

"Ma'am, no, I didn't—" He tried to calm her, hoping to correct what he might've said that had clearly upset her so badly, but it was no use; the girl was a loose cannon, cursing up a storm, jarring him from whatever fleeting thoughts he once had about her being some blameless, naïve woman.

"If anything, you fucking pigs are the bad guys!" she continued, voice only climbing higher and higher, making Shiro's skin crawl with how it echoed off the brick walls surrounding them. "Sitting around and doing—what? _Pretending_ to be helpful while people are being murdered? Kidnapped? Jacking each other off in the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot while you hide in your cars, acting like you 'save lives,' but all you really do is hand out fucking speeding tickets! And when there's an actual fucking _problem,_ it's always, 'oh, we don't have enough evidence,' or 'red tape this, red tape that.' Grow some fucking balls! Especially you! Don't you have anything better to do besides chasing me down like a goddamned thief all the time! Go get a fucking hobby or—"

She clamped a hand over her mouth, but the damage had already been done.

 _"You!"_ Shiro growled and lunged at her, _at Pidge,_ wrangling her in the second he realized that she was about to make a break for it. It wasn't too hard, keeping her in place, even with only his one good arm wrapped high across her chest while the other sort of hung dead at his side. She might've been feisty and sure, it hurt like hell when she kicked her heels back into his shins, but she was also very small and easy enough to maneuver so that he could inch his hold down to her waist for a more secure grip.

"Let go of me!" she shouted, twisting and turning, making the contents of whatever was in her backpack dig uncomfortably into his stomach. "I'll scream! I swear I will!"

"That's not how this works." He grunted when she knocked her head back into his collarbone. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this," he said. He could already imagine the look of approval on Captain Holt's face. On everyone's face. "Let's go. You're coming with me."

A pair of sharp incisors sank through his jacket and into his forearm.

Shiro hissed and forfeited his grasp on her, laboriously palming back his sleeve with his stiff carbon fingers to examine the deep, stinging mark that Pidge had left him with. She was already halfway around the corner by the time his initial shock wore off, but he wasn't about to let her get too far.

Through the filthy, rain-soaked alleyways, Shiro chased after the Paladin, who was quick and nimble, even for her small size, easily evading him and putting more and more distance between them as if she'd made a living as an Olympic sprinter. The only time he really had a chance to make a grab for her was when she stopped for half a second to try and fumble with something from behind a dumpster; her motorcycle, he realized, when she soon gave up and left it where it was. Good. That must've been her only escape, and now that he had her on foot, almost within reach—

"Argh—dammit, Lance!" Pidge cursed as she stumbled and slid on a stray marble from the other night. When she managed to catch and steady herself as they came to a cross, Shiro was close enough to herd her into the next alley over rather than straight ahead onto the main road.

They hit a dead end.

Shiro doubled over, hand on his knee as he panted for air, watching through narrowed eyes burning from sweat as Pidge panted too, frantically glancing around like a trapped animal searching for an escape. There wasn't one. The only way out was through him, and this time, he wouldn't let her go.

"Are you done yet?" he asked once he caught his breath enough to form a coherent sentence. Pidge only scowled at him. Shiro took a few more seconds to let his heartrate settle before standing back up straight. He unclipped the handcuffs from his belt. "Here." He tossed them over to her, landing at her feet with a _clink._ "Put those on."

Pidge looked from him, to the handcuffs, then back up at him. "No."

"I said put them on!"

"Or what? You'll _shoot_ me?"

"We can sit here all night if you want," he told her, earning little in the way of a response. "Or I can always just call for backup," he added, and began reaching for his walkie.

"How am I supposed to know you're really a cop and not just some weird freak with a fetish for chasing down and 'arresting' poor, unsuspecting women, anyway?"

Shiro growled. He didn't have time to play these games; she knew good and well who he was. Still, he fished out his wallet containing his badge and police ID from his back pocket and threw that over at her feet, too. He watched as she picked it up and turned it over in her hands, studying it for a long minute with an expression that he couldn't quite place. "It's real," he said, growing tired of her dragging things out.

"I know." She sighed and picked up the handcuffs, too.

"Put them on," he repeated. "No—behind your back."

"I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job or anything, but shouldn't _you_ be the one doing this?" she asked mockingly. He didn't answer. Pidge rolled her eyes and pulled her wrists taut, jingling them. "They're _on,_ okay?"

Shiro didn't trust her, but he had no other choice, not when he only had one arm to work with. "Now turn around and walk backwards. _Slowly."_

Pidge grumbled and did as she was told. When she was within arm's reach, Shiro went ahead and checked for himself, jostling the cuffs to make sure that they were, in fact, on. He locked them tighter around her wrists, netting himself a complaint and an indignant huff, then twirled her around so that he could guide her back through the alleyways and across the street to his cruiser, his hand clutched firmly over both her own for an added level of security in case she decided to try anything funny. Pidge didn't put up a fight, but that didn't mean she went willingly, either.

"I hope you know you're making a huge mistake," she told him bluntly through the metal partition cage that separated the good from the bad. "Seriously, you don't want to do this." But as Shiro buckled his seatbelt and started the car, he found himself hard pressed to imagine anything he could have possibly wanted more.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN:** Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to leave a review, it really means a lot to me and makes my day! Even those who don't, thank you for reading! :)

 **AlbaSky:** ¡Muchas gracias! Me alegra que te guste la historia, aunque tengas que traducirla. (Estoy usando el Traductor de Google también, jaja). Definitivamente encontraré a alguien para traducir la historia algún día! :)

* * *

With the streetlights cutting into the shadows as they passed and the quiet hum of the engine masking the sound of the wind whipping around them outside on the empty highway, Shiro would have probably found the drive back downtown to be almost serene—if it weren't for Pidge nearly knocking the spit out of him.

"Would you stop that already?"

 _Kick._

"I'm serious."

 _Kick._

"Alright, that's enough!"

"Then let me go."

"How many times do I have to tell you, I'm not—" _Kick._ "Hey! I said knock it off."

Shiro was no stranger to the difficulties of driving with only one fully-functional arm. As a self-sufficient bachelor who lived alone, he'd had plenty of time over the past two years to learn to adapt, and having a partner who handled the bulk of it while on the job certainly made his life easier, too. But driving with only one fully-functional arm and an agitated, spiteful _thing_ constantly ramming their heels into the back of his seat was something that no amount of practice could have possibly steeled his nerves for. How she was able to even gather up that much leg power in such a deliberately-cramped space was both astonishing and incredibly obnoxious.

 _Kick._

Shiro dug the heel of his palm into the steering wheel. "Is there a reason you're acting like a child?" he snapped.

"Depends. Is there a reason you're being an asshole?" Pidge shot back. Shiro wasn't going to entertain such a ridiculous question. "Listen, it's gonna save the both of us a lot of trouble if you'd just forget about all this and let me go. Trust me."

"Sorry, but I can't say I'm too keen on trusting people who bite me," he said, the soreness in his arm serving as a reminder of what could happen when he let his guard down for even a second. "I really hope you're not positive for anything. For your sake, not mine."

"This is ridiculous," Pidge said. "I didn't even do anything!"

"You robbed a _bank."_

"Barely!"

"Doesn't make you any less of a criminal," Shiro said. Then before she even had the chance to finish taking a breath for her imminent rebuttal, added, "Nope. Not gonna argue with you. But good luck explaining that in court, though."

Pidge gave a dramatic huff and flopped back into her seat. "You don't know me," she mumbled, quiet and small, though hardly an indication of remorse for her actions with the way her words dripped with contempt.

Shiro watched her from the rearview mirror as she pouted and looked out the window. She was right—he really _didn't_ know her, aside from the fact that she was a pain in his ass, both figuratively and literally. He'd been so caught up in the midst of things that he hadn't even remembered to ask for her ID, let alone her real name.

"So. Pidge." The name settled uncomfortably on his tongue. It felt weird, addressing her as an actual individual rather than by some titular placeholder that tied her to a larger, shadier collective. "What kind of name is that?"

"The only one you're getting," she told him, and that was the end of that.

* * *

For the next ten minutes, Pidge miraculously managed to keep her thoughts—and more importantly, her feet—to herself. Not only was this a much-needed vacation from the brain-rattling hell that that car ride had become, but it also gave Shiro some downtime to come up with an idea that was ten times better than simply tossing Pidge into a holding cell overnight until the captain arrived bright and early the next day.

"Hey, wait, aren't you gonna stop?" Pidge said. She elbowed the backseat to sit up straight as she watched the precinct pass by, dead and still, devoid of its usual hectic activity. Most of the squad cars were left unattended in the side parking lot and only a few lights remained on in the main office. "What are you doing? You're passing up the jail!"

Shiro made a left. Pidge kicked his seat.

 _"_ _Hello,_ I'm talking to you!" she shouted. "I thought you said you were turning me in!"

There'd been a change of plans. "Eventually."

"'Eventually'? What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means exactly what it means." Shiro merged back onto the highway. "First, you're going to tell me where the others are."

"Others?"

"I know you don't work alone. I've seen that other guy. Lance, right?" He could practically feel Pidge staring holes into the back of his head. "How many of you are there? Two? Three? Which one are you? The brains? Hacker?"

Pidge spat at him from the backseat.

"I'd rather go to prison than tell you anything."

Shiro grimaced as he wiped the back of his neck. God, she had better be clean. "Oh, believe me, you're definitely going—I'll make sure of that myself. Just not yet," he assured her. "Robbery, assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest—"

"Yeah, and what about you? Newsflash: you're basically kidnapping me. Which is _illegal,"_ she said. "And you didn't even read me my rights, dumbass, so looks like you've got unlawful interrogation going for you, too. Good going, _officer."_

Shiro met her challenging stare in the mirror.

So she was one of _those_ people, then—the ones who liked to pull out the book and act as if they knew the law better than an actual police officer did. Nothing he hadn't dealt with hundreds of times before. Except for some reason, this girl's thinly-veiled threats made him uneasy in a way that nobody else's had, as if she'd actually make good on them rather than just throw a fit in holding for an hour before breaking, pleading guilty, and asking for a lawyer. As if she _was_ the lawyer.

"Now c'mon, this isn't funny anymore. Do we have a deal or what?" she asked, perking a brow. "You let me go, and I forget all about the psycho cop who violated my rights and threatened to hold me hostage."

"And that's bribery," Shiro said, and then he angled the mirror away.

* * *

Perhaps, for once in his meticulously-organized life, Shiro hadn't thought his plan through well enough. Fine. He could admit that. In his defense, it was kind of hard to think straight when your brain was being knocked around your skull like cheap candy in a six-year-old's birthday piñata, and staying awake for nearly 72 hours straight with only the occasional nod-off probably hadn't lent him much clarity either, but whatever. The point is, owning up to his mistakes had never been a problem for Shiro. This, however, was more like a disaster.

"I'm so _bored,"_ Pidge moaned, slumped against the car door with her cheek smushed up against the window. Now unable to go down to the precinct for fear of Pidge calling foul for police misconduct and with nowhere else to go, Shiro had pulled off into an empty department store parking lot after wasting nearly a quarter tank of gas driving back and forth across town.

"We can always talk, if you want," he offered nonchalantly, checking his phone. "In fact, the sooner you tell me where your friends are, the sooner we can go."

It hadn't taken him long to come up with a new course of action; he really only had two options to choose from, anyway. Either he could (a) turn Pidge in and get ran through the wringer of internal affairs; or (b) keep Pidge to use as leverage, grab the rest of the Paladins, turn them in all at once, and _then_ get ran through the wringer of internal affairs. The choice was clear. Either one he chose he was bound to get chewed out and put in front of a civilian review board, but at least with the second option the Paladin case would finally be put to rest and he'd be back working to take down the Galra crime ring with the rest of the department again. Hopefully.

Pidge scoffed. "Over my dead body," she told him, which brought Shiro to the first—and possibly most difficult—obstacle of his new plan: actually getting her to talk. "Seriously though, can you at least turn on the radio or something?"

"No."

"Fucking hell."

"Language."

"'Language,'" she mocked, and Shiro had to make a conscious decision to pick and choose his battles.

* * *

They sat there in that parking lot for the better part of an hour, Shiro passing the time with some crossword puzzles on his phone while Pidge lied sprawled out in the back, quiet for the most part, but every so often reminding Shiro that she was very much still alive and quite ticked off with a groan here and some twisting and turning there.

 _Kick._

"You're really gonna start that up again?" Shiro asked, readjusting the mirror so that he could fix her with a warning glance. "Do you want me to zip tie your ankles? Because—"

"I'm hungry."

Oh. "I don't know what to tell you."

"I said I'm _hungry."_

"Well, that's too bad," he said, silently praying that she wouldn't force him to deliver on his empty threat; he really didn't want to get kicked in the jaw tonight. "There's plenty of food down at the precinct, though. Maybe once you stop messing around and start taking this a little more seriously—"

"You wanna add cruel and unusual punishment to your rap sheet, too? Be my guest." She shrugged. Shiro looked at her. "Denying me food and water? That's considered inhumane treatment."

"I'm not denying you anything. I told you, there's food at the precinct."

"Yeah, the precinct that _you're not taking me to,"_ she reminded him. "Kidnapper."

Shiro squeezed his eyes shut and exhaled slowly through his nose. He didn't know how much more of this he could take.

"There's a breakfast diner not too far from here, if you want," she suggested. "They've got really good blueberry pancakes. Oh, and French toast. I mean, unless you're like, one of those gluten-free health nuts, which… honestly, wouldn't really surprise me with how uptight you are. You need to chill out and eat some bread."

"Absolutely not." He wasn't about to let this monster loose inside of a public establishment. But then his stomach rumbled, and Pidge lifted a brow at him. He pretended not to notice, concentrating his attention on the pavement outside, but his gut was unyielding.

"So—?"

"Taco Bell," he relented, and threw the car in drive. It was the only place still open this late with a drive-thru, and therefore the safest bet he had if he wanted to keep the little demon contained.

* * *

As if Pidge's unruly demands for food hadn't been bad enough, she actually had the audacity to be picky about what she got, too.

"I don't want water! It's gross!"

"It's _water."_

"Have you ever had water from Taco Bell? It tastes like plastic. Dirty plastic," she argued. Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose as he, for the fourth time, edited his order. "Oh, and don't forget the cinnamon twists."

"And can I add on an order of—wait, no." He turned to Pidge. "Do you think this is a joke?"

"Uh, no? It's a drive-thru, clearly."

 _Pick and choose your battles,_ Shiro told himself as he paid for their order and proceeded to find a place to park. He separated his own food from Pidge's and rolled down the back window, just enough to reach around and slide her two burritos through without having to get out and open the door. "Here. Now, just—be quiet," he told her, dropping them onto the seat. There was a beat of silence as he considered how to go about safely handing her the large Baja Blast she'd insisted on having.

"Hey, genius," she said, cutting into his brief moment of zen. "How exactly am I supposed to eat like this?"

Shiro dropped his head into his hand and groaned.

* * *

"This is the most degrading moment of my life."

Shiro rolled his eyes as he tore open a mild sauce packet with his teeth, slathering it all over Pidge's burrito before holding it up to her mouth. "You did this to yourself."

"What? I'm not the one who—more mild sauce—thought it'd be a bright idea to leave me handcuffed behind my—hey, no, don't _dip_ it. What's wrong with you? Unroll it and spread it around like a civilized human being."

Shiro did the best he could with one hand and went in for another attempt.

"Ew, there's lettuce. I said no lettuce."

"Would you just. _Eat. The burrito."_

Pidge turned her cheek.

Shiro felt more like a babysitter than a police officer, sitting in that cramped backseat and picking apart a burrito as if he were trying to feed a fussy child—except that Pidge definitely was not a child. Up this close and beneath the dome light, he could see her much more clearly than he initially had in that dark alley; and despite her small stature—and her less-than-eloquent choice of words—there was no way this girl could have possibly been younger than eighteen.

Shiro's eyes slid down to the shoulder strap of the backpack she was still wearing.

"Don't even think about it," she warned, mouth full and meat sauce running down her chin. Shiro couldn't help but quirk his lips at the sight. Even for a social deviant, he couldn't deny that she _was_ pretty cute. He reached out and wiped her face before letting her take a sip of her drink.

"Fair enough. You did promise to keep your feet on the floor, and so far, so good," he told her. "But I'm going to see what you've got in there sooner or later. You're still under arrest, you know."

"Says you."

"Yes, me. A police officer."

"Right. Hey, can you add a bit more mild sauce to the next one?"

Shiro frowned. "Are you even aware of the situation that you're in?"

"I don't think you're aware of the situation that _you're_ in," Pidge said, watching him as he prepared her other burrito. The way she eyed his jacket-clad right arm, which he kept wedged tight between himself and the backseat, hadn't gone unnoticed. "I bet it'd be a lot more efficient if you used both hands," she told him, and Shiro decided that she could figure out how to wipe her face on her own.

* * *

Once the beast had been fed and Shiro finally had the chance to put something into his own mouth, he disposed of their garbage and returned to the front seat. There he tried to finish one of the crossword puzzles he'd started earlier, but it was almost two o'clock in the morning and he found that his eyes were getting harder and harder to keep open. Pidge, on the other hand, was wide awake.

"So… are you just crazy, or what?"

"If you're trying to get a reaction out of me, it's not going to work."

"No, I'm being serious. It's a serious question."

Shiro glanced at Pidge through the rearview mirror. She looked honest enough. "What do you mean?"

"Keeping a suspect hostage," she said. "I mean, you're a cop—I shouldn't have to tell you that's illegal. Do you just not care, or…?"

Shiro sighed. "You wouldn't understand."

"Try me?"

He didn't, choosing to close his eyes and let his head fall back instead.


	5. Chapter 5

The nightmares always started the same.

"Hello?" Shiro's voice echoed around the cold, hollow room. Blindfolded, on his knees and with his wrists bound behind his back, he had no idea what was going on. The only thing he could hear were the tips of his own shoes scuffing against concrete as he tried to twist his hands free. "Hello? Is someone there?"

He was alone—he knew that. _Has_ known that, at least for the last dozen or so times he's been here. Yet, for some reason, he could never remember when the last time was. It always felt so new.

"Keith! Allur _—augh!"_

Someone jabbed their finger into the open wound in his thigh, making him grit his teeth and double over in pain. Whatever was lodged in there—a bullet. Right. "Unless you'd prefer for the next one to be in your skull, I'd suggest you stop your blabbering."

He could see now—could see through his tattered pants that his wound was more or less healed over, that he was in a chair, that he wasn't alone. Sendak—that was his name, with the glass eye and that hellish, nightmare-inducing grin—stood over him with a glimmering, freshly-sharpened bowie knife. Shiro tucked his chin.

"Now, Champion. This isn't anything we haven't done before." Sendak chuckled, grabbing a fistful of Shiro's hair and yanking it back. He dragged the blade flat along Shiro's neck, from the bottom to the top, something damp and slimy giving way. "We need to make sure you look presentable for the show tonight. You seem to have gotten yourself quite the following after last week, and it'd be a shame if you didn't look your best for your new fans."

Holding the knife with his prosthetic hand, Sendak's grip was rigid and unsteady. He nicked Shiro's jaw on a particularly harsh upstroke, making Shiro hiss and reflexively attempt to reach up to tend to his wound. There was a bloody, raw stump where his right arm should've been.

"Oh, dear." Sendak clicked his tongue. "What a mess."

"Don't talk like that, sir. We're going to be fine." Shiro was back on his knees again, right arm intact, the bullet wound still fresh and searing in his thigh. In front of him sat Captain Holt, hand clutched tightly over his own bleeding arm. "Keith, he'll know how to find us, and if not—"

"Please, Shiro, this isn't the time for wishful thinking." Holt coughed as the dirt from the floor lifted and swirled around them. "God only knows where the hell they took us, and it's anyone's guess as to what they're planning on doing. Right now we need to be focusing on the next ten minutes."

"The next ten minutes?" Shiro asked, and then it was suddenly two weeks later, or three, or four, and he was alone again, tired and thirsty, wondering when the next time one of Sendak's men would come through with something to eat. There was a gunshot.

"Captain!" Shiro tried to meet him halfway as the door swung open and the captain was shoved back inside, tripping and falling to his knees with a pained grunt. Shiro looked him over frantically, searching for any new wounds or marks outside of the ones left behind from the Galra's usual interrogation tactics, but found nothing.

"Captain Holt? Captain Holt, are you alright? What did they do to you?"

"They—Iverson—" He retched. "I couldn't—"

Shiro grabbed him. "Captain Holt, please, you need to calm down."

"The room! _The room,_ Shiro! I saw it! It's here!"

"The… room?" Shiro asked, but it was no use. Holt was nearly incomprehensible, crumbling more and more into hysterics with every passing second, eyes blown wide and hands shaking on Shiro's shoulders as he rambled on about some room, and the color red, and blood, god, there was so much blood—on his hands, on his glasses. On Shiro.

Captain Holt was gone. "I still think we should have killed him."

"No need. He's of more use to us alive than dead. A deterrent, if nothing else."

"But what if he comes back?"

"Assuming you kept his head covered as I had instructed, that will not happen."

Shiro couldn't see anymore, but he could feel the air move as Sendak's crony stepped around him. "Then what about this one? Drop him off, too?" There was some tugging at his wrist bindings. "I don't think we can use him for anything. He's too stubborn."

Sendak laughed that dark, malevolent laugh that never failed to send chills down Shiro's spine. "The perfect candidate for the showroom, in my opinion."

And for a brief, fleeting moment Shiro was _in_ that room, the one he'd seen in so many evidence reels before. There was a camera pointed at him. He was clean and freshly shaved, wrists pulled high and secured in a thick rope of cable, where he hung from an industrial hook with his feet just barely touching the ground. Underneath the camera was a television that mimicked every move and sound he made. He could see Haxus in the feed, standing somewhere behind him, waiting.

But then he was back in the other room again, hands free, thigh only sore now and wrapped in an old blood-soaked tourniquet. Captain Holt was next to him, his back against the wall, looking as weary and hungry as Shiro felt. Between them sat a small tray with a few slices of bread and some water.

"Eat, Shiro. Don't worry about me."

"I'm not going to let you starve yourself, sir. It's been three days—"

"And it might be another three before they decide to give us anything else. Now stop arguing with me and _eat."_ Holt's words were demanding, though hardly intimidating with how hoarse his voice was. "Don't look at me like that. That was an order. Not as your superior, but as your elder."

"But, sir—"

 _"Enough."_

"Captain—" Shiro sucked in a breath. "Samuel."

"I'm not going to tell you again."

"You need to eat." He felt so out of line speaking to his boss like that but he had no other choice. He couldn't keep letting him do this. "Please, think about your family," he urged, "your wife, Matt, Katie. You're always talking about them. Don't tell me you don't want to see them again." He pushed the tray closer to Holt, who looked down at it with a grimace.

"I bet Matt's tearing apart the town looking for us as we speak," Shiro added, attempting to distract him.

Holt sighed. "You know he's been talking about leaving the lab? Wants to join the force."

"That's what he told me."

"I don't trust that boy with a gun." He shook his head. "To be honest, I'd rather him stay over in forensics. Less of a chance of him shooting himself in the foot over there."

"I'm sure it's just a phase."

"Humph." Holt shot him a look. "And Katie—I don't know what I'm going to do with her, either. Soon as she finishes up her Master's next month she'll be starting with the FBI."

"You must be proud."

"Oh, more than you could imagine." He grinned, ever the proud father, aguish and suffering be damned. "They recruited her before she even graduated. Can you believe that?"

"Well, you've always said she was smart."

Holt chuckled. "I've also said plenty of other things, too, but you don't seem to listen."

Shiro couldn't miss the teasing in Holt's voice if he tried. "Even in a hostage situation you're still trying to pawn her off on me," he observed humorously.

"You know I would have never suggested it if I didn't think you were a good man."

It was Shiro's turn to laugh. "Maybe once we get out of here I'll finally take you up on that offer," he told him, mirroring the captain's small smile. Then he closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall, ignoring the rumbling of his own gut as the captain finally caved.

But when he opened his eyes he was back in the room with the camera again, the sharp concrete floor scraping the skin off his bare shoulders, thumbs gouged into the eyes of some man straddling his chest. No, not some man—he had a name, a family, a reason he was there—but it didn't matter. None of that did. Not when their hands were clenched around Shiro's throat so tight that his lips were numb and he could hear his trachea cracking over the sound of blood rushing in his ears.

Shiro had tried to warn him, days before. Told the man that he didn't want to do this, that if they wouldn't fight then he wouldn't fight either. But the rules of that first game were simple: no weapons, only one survives; and after enough nights of food withheld in response to their protest, hunger soon turned to desperation, and Shiro had lost his first and only ally after the captain had been released.

Someone was pounding on the two-way mirror that took up nearly the entire wall adjacent to the camera.

"Gentlemen," Sendak warned from the other side, "let's hurry it up, shall we? Our viewers don't have all night, so let's move this along and give them what they paid for, lest you'd both prefer to die."

Shiro screwed his eyes shut as if it'd help block out the noise of the man screaming in agony above him. Blood ran down his wrists and dripped onto his face. The pounding continued.

"I said _hurry it up,_ Shiro."

Shiro's focus wavered, giving the man on top of him a chance to really bear down on him with all his weight, choking what little air Shiro had left right out of him. Sendak hardly ever referred to him like that.

"Shiro?"

More pounding. More screaming.

"Shiro!"

He wasn't in the room anymore. He was outside, in the dead of night, running across the field and stumbling over overgrown patches of weeds. Again. The figure of a man stood on the roof of the warehouse behind him, loading his rifle, aiming it—

"SHIRO, WAKE UP!"


	6. Chapter 6

Shiro gasped as he jolted awake, bashing his temple into the hard-plastic seat belt cover near his head. He then promptly proceeded to fling himself forward into the steering wheel, both out of shock from the excruciating pain and to avoid the bullet that was bound for his left shoulder for the third time that month.

"Are you alright?"

Drenched in sweat and feeling as if his heart were trying to shatter its way through his ribcage, Shiro was most certainly not alright, but his panic began to subside when he finally processed where he was: safe, in the front seat of his squad car, sitting in the empty parking lot of a closed Taco Bell. Not the first place he would have expected to be, but at least he wasn't in danger.

"Shiro?"

Shiro looked over to see Pidge's cheek pressed into the mesh partition on his right. The throbbing pulse in his head suddenly ached twice as hard as the night's earlier events flooded back into his memory. He covered his face and groaned.

"Are you—?"

"I'm fine." The words were muffled in his hand. "Don't worry about it."

"You don't look fine."

Shiro glanced at the radio clock. 4:43 AM. He popped open the glove compartment and grabbed the small pill container that he kept a few of his spare medications in. He swallowed his overdue nighttime meds dry, along with the ones for later that morning.

"You really had me worried for a minute," Pidge continued from over his shoulder. "Are you sure you're okay? I mean, you were yelling in your sleep about—things. I dunno." She paused, the hesitancy in her voice obvious enough for even Shiro to take notice. "I thought you were gonna hurt yourself with how much you were tossing and turning."

"I said I'm _fine,"_ Shiro snapped. He didn't mean to; he was simply overstimulated and still trying to calm down after everything that'd just happened; but every little sound was like water dripping from a leaky faucet, and Pidge's persistent yet oddly-concerned harassment was only adding to his frustration. To his surprise, Pidge didn't respond in her usual snarky fashion—or at all.

"What, so now all of a sudden you've got nothing to say? Really?" he sneered into the rearview mirror. Pidge furrowed her brows and looked away, turning her attention to the unkempt box hedges outside. As the minutes passed by without a peep from the defiant girl in the backseat, Shiro's agitation from being blatantly ignored soon turned to disappointment, and then, not long afterward, to guilt.

"I'm sorry," he apologized once his nerves had settled and his breathing returned back to normal. "That was uncalled for. I shouldn't have said that."

"If you're really sorry you'll let me sit up front."

"What? No."

"C'mon, pleeeeeease?" she begged, a completely different reaction from the one that he'd been prepared for. "I've been stuck back here for hours, my legs are _killing me."_ Shiro ignored her. Pidge sighed. "Okay, fine. But can I at least get out and stretch for a second?"

Shiro had every intention of saying no. "You do know that you're back there for a reason, right?" was what he had planned on telling her when he chanced another look in the rearview mirror; but then he'd never seen those big brown eyes of hers look so sad and puppy dog-like before, and she looked so uncomfortable, and, well, she _had_ been behaved for the last few hours…

…and then somehow she had wormed her way from being guided around the parking lot in small circles with Shiro's one hand secured tightly around her wrists behind her back and the false promise of a taser in his other, to sitting shotgun in the passenger seat next to him with her feet kicked up on the dashboard, asking if he ever watched movies on the laptop that sat mounted between them.

"No. Now don't make me regret this." He locked the car doors twice over and nodded at her offended sneakers. Pidge took the hint and dropped them back down to the floor without complaint.

"Sorry. It's just so roomy up here!" She sat forward, looking around in awe. The strangely-familiar curl of her lips made Shiro's stomach churn in a way that he couldn't quite understand. Where had he seen that before? "I mean, it's pretty roomy back there too for a squad car, but I haven't had the chance to sit up front in one of these newer ones yet."

"Wait, you've—?" Why was he surprised? "Hold on, I thought you said your legs were killing you?"

"Well, yeah, but I never said it was because I didn't have room."

Shiro stared at her. Pidge smiled back. Shiro hit the locks one more time, just to be safe.

"So," Pidge drawled, "what are the chances of you uncuffing me?"

"Zero."

"What about cuffing my hands in front?"

"Just as likely." Pidge opened her mouth to protest, but Shiro beat her to it. "Hey, I said no. Now stop asking," he told her. "I'm not letting you pull one over on me like that again."

Pidge deflated and fell back into her seat. "It's just that my arms really hurt," she said, voice quiet and small as she looked down at her lap. If making Shiro feel as if he'd just kicked a basket of helpless kittens into a river was what Pidge was going for, then she'd be pleased to know that she had succeeded.

Shiro sighed. "Alright," he began cautiously, already starting to second guess his decision; but he knew what it was like to have his hands tied behind his back for so long that his fingers went numb and his shoulders burned, and the thought that he was putting someone else through that same experience made him feel sick, especially with the memory still fresh in his mind. "If I do this, you have to promise to sit still. You can't move. Got it?"

Pidge nodded.

"I mean it. Not a single inch."

"I promise, I won't."

"Because if you do, I'll—"

"Taser, yeah, I know." She turned her back toward him and looked over her shoulder. She wiggled her hands when he took too long to think about how he'd go about doing this; he didn't want to hurt her, but he didn't want to get himself hurt, either. Having both of her hands free—even for a second—was not a risk he was willing to take.

In the end, it was an elaborate process that involved a second pair of handcuffs, the steering wheel, and a ridiculous amount of unfounded faith in a sneaky, manipulative criminal whose teeth marks were still deeply ingrained in his arm. But Pidge had kept true to her promise, and was only a little disappointed to learn that Shiro had no plans to indulge her first choice of uncuffing her entirely.

"Better?" he watched as she stretched her arms up over her head. He'd used the seat belt as a sort of makeshift post to handcuff her around; it wouldn't be much help to keep her from lunging at him if she wanted to, but at least it'd keep her from getting away if she tried to get out.

Pidge closed her eyes and slid down in her seat. "You have no idea," she said, tipping her head back with a relieved sigh. Her eyes shot open. "Sorry, I didn't mean—um, nevermind."

"What?"

"Nothing."

Shiro lifted a brow, but ultimately decided that it'd probably be best to just leave it alone. Pidge, for one reason or another, was being compliant and he didn't want to jinx it.

The silence they found themselves in was awkward compared to how it'd been before. Shiro watched her from the corner of his eye for any sudden movements. Though the strain only made the sharp ache behind them worse, he couldn't deny that he felt considerably less anxious having her sit next to him rather than behind him. Not because she was nice to look at or anything—which, sure, okay, she _was—_ but because he never did find the saying "out of sight, out of mind" to be nearly as comforting as most people did; especially not when it came to a tiny, dangerous woman like the one fidgeting with her hands in the seat next to him.

 _Actually,_ he thought as he watched her chew her lip, _if her hair were shorter—_

"Can you put on some music or something?"

Shiro blinked. "Didn't I already say no?"

"But it's so _quiet."_

"Because I need to be able to hear if I get any calls from dispatch."

Pidge's skeptical gaze shifted to the radio, then back to him.

"But the radio is off," she informed him.

"I said _no."_

Shiro's ruling was observed for a total of four seconds before Pidge concluded that following it was optional and she turned it on anyway.

— _Oh, here she comes;_

 _Watch out boy, she'll chew you up!_

 _Oh, here she comes;_

 _She's a maneater—_

Shiro jammed his palm into the radio's power button, flustered.

"Central to 8-Castle-3-1, 8-Castle-3-1, do you copy." In his rush to turn off the radio, he'd accidentally switched it over to communications instead. "8-Castle-3-1, Officer Shirogane, do you copy."

"I think that's for you," Pidge said, an amused smirk tugging at her lips. Shiro glared at her as he snatched up the receiver.

"8-Castle-3-1, 10-20, do you copy."

"10-4, Shirogane here. I copy."

"Ah, Shiro! There you are!" The radio buzzed and cracked over Coran's chipper tone. "It's good to hear your voice. You seem to have gotten the department up in a bit of a tizzy worrying about you. Is everything alright?"

"I'm fine," Shiro assured him. "Just—haven't been feeling well. Thought it'd be good for everyone if I took a few days off. You know, to clear my head." He frowned. Didn't Keith say he had told the captain that he was out sick? "Coran, how long have you been calling for me?"

"Not long! Only about six hours or so."

"Are you kidding me?"

"Between regular dispatches, of course," Coran elaborated, as if that made things any better. "Allura's been trying to get ahold of you, but apparently you haven't been answering your phone. Keith mentioned you were out with a cold, so she swung by your apartment to drop off some soup, but your neighbors said they hadn't seen you in almost three days! And none of the hospitals—"

"So you've been clogging up the channel for the last six hours trying to find me?" As flattering as it was to know that people cared about him, that was just ridiculous.

"I figured it'd be worth a shot since Keith said you had the car," Coran said. Shiro could practically hear the shrug in his voice. "Anyway, if you could give Allura a call at your earliest convenience—"

"It's five in the morning, Coran."

"—well enough to still help out with the charity ball. If not though, no worries! Kolivan's offered to step in and take over if you'd prefer. With the lifting, I mean—not as the guest of honor. That spot's still yours!"

Shiro suppressed a groan. On the list of grievances he had in regard to the department's annual charity event, hanging lights and moving furniture around was hardly one of them. But a promise was a promise, broken prosthesis or not. "Tell Allura I'll meet her at the hall later tonight. There's a few… errands I need to take care of first, but after that, I'm all hers."

"Splendid!" Coran beamed. "I'll let Allura know. Oh! And before I forget! Keith gave me a message to relay to you as well. Said he wants you to call him ASAP."

Shiro grimaced as he thought about all those unanswered voice messages. "Thanks, Coran. I'll do that."

"My pleasure, Shiro! Actually, why don't you hang on a tick while I have you on the line? I know just the recipe for homemade beef and applesauce stew that'll knock that cold right out of you in no time! Now, was it three pounds of sugar, or three pounds of—?"

"Sorry, Coran, but looks like there's an emergency. Bye!" Shiro blurted as he rushed to turn off the radio before Coran could delve even further into yet another of his potentially-deadly "family recipes." Having to put up with his well-meaning cooking at their Wednesday potlucks at work was already bad enough, but after last week's particularly hellish batch of peanut butter garlic bread? Shiro wasn't sure how much more he could take.

Shiro swallowed down the brief wave of nausea that washed over him as he remembered the weird, rubbery texture. He could feel Pidge's amused stare. "What?"

"Allura, huh? That your girlfriend?"

Shiro sighed. "Ex-partner."

"Ex? You work alone?"

"No, I still have a partner. Just not her."

Pidge thought about it for a second. "Keith?"

Shiro nodded.

"Then shouldn't he be with you?" she prodded. "Does he know what you're doing?"

Shiro, deciding he'd already said too much, opted to fiddle with an unfinished crossword puzzle on his phone rather than to answer. So naturally, Pidge took it upon herself to fill in the blanks with a bit of far-fetched speculation.

"Let me guess—you're one of those 'lone wolf' types, huh?" Shiro could feel her watching him, waiting for a reaction that he wasn't going to let her have. "Married to the force, probably got left by your wife, and now you're desperately trying to prove yourself or whatever."

Shiro hummed. Pidge perked up.

"Am I right?"

"What's another word for 'delinquent'?"

"Hmph." Pidge flopped back against her seat. Shiro couldn't help the barest hint of a grin that pulled at the corner of his lips. "I wouldn't be surprised if you even had a drinking problem," she continued. "Probably not a smoker since you don't _smell_ like one, thank god, but maybe some tacky tribal tattoos—whoa!"

"Hey!" Shiro shouted, snatching his right arm away from the center console armrest. Too immersed in his crossword puzzle, he hadn't noticed Pidge pulling back the sleeve of his windbreaker.

"I knew it!" Pidge looked as if she'd struck gold. "Man, I was _wondering_ why you were wearing a jacket in 85 degree weather! And earlier, in the alley with the handcuffs, and in the backseat… now it makes so much more sense!"

Shiro, whose eyes were burning from exhaustion, did not share her enthusiasm.

"Huh. So they really let you…?"

He lifted a brow. "Let me _what?"_

"You know. Like, be a cop? And drive?"

"I can drive just fine."

"Sorry, I didn't mean it like that," Pidge said, wincing. "And—and I wasn't freaked out or anything! Not that, uh, that really matters… I just kinda had a hunch, you know? After how weird you've been all night? And with the food? And—" Pidge paused. "Okay, for once in my life, I'm just gonna shut up before I make things worse."

"That's a smart idea."

"I was only joking about the drinking problem, by the way," she continued, disregarding her previous decision to not dig her grave any deeper. "But, um. Your arm… is there something wrong with it? You haven't used it all night, now that I'm thinking about it."

Shiro fixed his jacket and pocketed his phone. "I have your buddy Lance and his marbles to thank for that."

"Oh." Pidge's face fell. "That's—is it that bad?"

Shiro sighed. It was nearly six o'clock, and the hazy red and blue beginnings of sunrise were threatening to pass above the treeline at any moment. He yearned for his bed. The two-and-a-half hours of fitful sleep he'd managed to get was hardly enough to keep him awake for very much longer, and even if it were, it didn't seem like Pidge was anywhere near ready to crack. He figured he'd give it one last shot.

"I'm only going to ask you this one more time," he said, struggling and failing to hold back a yawn. Pidge must've been tired since she yawned, too. "Tell me about the other Paladins."

"Paladins? That's cute. Come up with that yourself?"

"Is that a no?"

"Why? Are you finally throwing in the towel?"

Shiro cracked his back as he sat up straight. He threw the car in drive, pulled out of the Taco Bell parking lot, and made a right onto the main road—the opposite direction, which Pidge clearly noticed, judging by the confused look on her face, of where the precinct was. He switched on the navigation and scrolled through his most frequent locations.

"Not yet," he said, and selected the route home.


End file.
